And he was a freaking virgin.
She exhaled slowly and trudged to her car.
It was impossible to understand what made it so good. She’d had her fair share of attentive lovers. Of broody bad boys.
But she couldn’t think about Patch anymore. What happened today could never be allowed to happen again.
No mixing business and pleasure.
She climbed into the car and slotted the key into the ignition. The silence was too deafening so she turned on the radio. Celine Dion was singing about how she didn’t want to be all by herself.
A lone tear escaped, dripping off the side of her chin with a sullen plop.
She raised her fingers and rubbed away the remaining wetness. Where had that little sucker come from? She wasn’t a crier. She certainly wasn’t a “sit in the car alone and sob” type.
She didn’t need to mourn something that would never happen. She needed to smile because it had happened. And move on.
Which meant that she also needed a plan.
And so help her, she’d drive up and down residential Denver streets until she’d concocted one.
The reality was that she ended up near Capitol Hill typing “Patrick Donnelly” into her phone’s internet search engine.
The guy she encountered today wasn’t the same guy who broke a man’s arm in a fight. He’d run Stefan off, but he hadn’t been violent. If anything, he’d been the opposite, cool and contained. The definition of self-control.
The first hit was a tabloid story of the fight. It had been back around Thanksgiving and the details were sketchy. The unconfirmed eyewitness reports were that Patrick and the lawyer got into a verbal altercation over a woman.
One thing led to another and both found themselves outside.
Patrick beat up the man. The rest they say was history. The lawyer’s shoulder was dislocated.
No information about the woman was shared. Who she was. What she saw.
She tried searching different variations of the same question and all came out the same way. No name. No quote. No picture.
All the evidence pointed to the fact that Patch and this lawyer got themselves into some sort of cockfight. Not shocking behavior for two men at a bar. She’d seen it all before. Heck, she’d had two guys fight over her before. Neither had a chance, but they’d been too hyped on testosterone to realize that.
But the guy at her house today wasn’t a player who thought he was God’s gift to women. For as much as he was a stranger, she trusted her intuition.
The sleet turned to snow. The world outside vanished as the windshield was covered in a blanket of white. Her breath crystallized in the cold air, an ephemeral cloud of white.
She typed his name into Wikipedia. It was jarring to have the page load and his picture stare back. Her stomach dipped as if she’d driven too fast down a steep hill. His gaze was so bright, it was as if he looked right at her. As if he knew she was here, parked on the side of the road, still warm between the legs, reading more about him.
She wasn’t being a stalker. It was Wikipedia, available for any member of the public. But no one else had felt his tongue in their pussy today.
She confirmed his age. Twenty-five. He was a Virgo. Nothing much listed under family life. Just a mention he’d gotten a scholarship to Boston College. He’d spent time in a seminary before being drafted.
A jolt struck her core. She’d known this, but it had slipped her mind, the way hundreds of facts about strangers filtered through her mind on a regular basis. Was that why he’d been a virgin? Because he’d wanted to be a priest?
She tried to imagine him without the scruff, in the black, a white collar at his neck.
Whoa, mama.
The clench between her legs was most unholy. She’d never in a million years expected to have a priest fetish, or be interested in deflowering a man, but it appeared that Patch Donnelly was challenging all her preconceptions.
She skimmed the rest of his page. Everything else was hockey related. References to career highs, winning the Stanley Cup; and lows, the fights, the penalties, the notorious temper. She searched pictures. Losing herself in the images. Never was he photographed with a woman. Rarely did he smile.
A snow plow went by, snapping her out of her reverie. Her butt was frozen and her nose was numb. Great. She had officially lost her mind.
